What are some car-repair jobs you always wished you could do but have never done?

[clare]

A cut-off wheel on a grinder or a "muffler chisel" - preterably on an air hammer, also makes muffler repair a lot easier - but the "blue tip wrench" is pretty universal

My 16 year old taurus has stainless exhaust, as does my 22 year old Ranger. So did my Mystique, originally - but when a flange broke for the original owner some bandit sold him a complete walker mild steel system. After I got it, I replaced it again with stainless. The last car s I ownwd without factory stainless exhaust were th '90 aerostar and the '88 New Yorker. My daughres' Honda Civic and Hyundai Elantra both have stainless systems - the Honda's a 2008.

[clare]

At 20 years old, possibly the last Toyota made without stainless exhaust.

[clare]

Find a place to get the wrench through to the bolt and spin the fan - don't need to move the handle more than a few degrees.

[clare]

If it has a recylcling logo on it the number tells you what it is - -

- -

[clare]

as a retired auto tech, I have to dissagree. A "plowed" rotor can NOT bed properly to the rotor, it cannot "bed" proerly and it WILL overheat parts of the pad before the rest even contacts the rotor. A "scored" rotor does NOT pas an Ontario DOT test - nor should it. If a new pad and rotor wear together and smoothe "ridges" develop, thats a slightly different situation - but you should NEVER put new pads on a grooved rotor -

[clare]

For PE see

[Scott Dorsey]

If it's a 20-year-old Toyota the original exhaust was stainless, but it was a ferritic stainless that will eventually corrode with enough heating cycles.

"Stainless Steel" is actually a whole lot of totally different things in three different and hardly-even-related families.

--scott

[tom]

My 2000 Acura TL has an all stainless exhaust system. I'll never buy another car or truck without a stainless exhaust system. That is one headache no one needs.

[Xeno]

It's higher voltage to get a spark happening more easily in lean mixture land but it's the *high energy* that allows the longer duration spark. It's one of the reasons manufacturers went to individual coils - only need to supply spark to one cylinder so gets a very long dwell time with plenty of coil saturation.

Up to 20k. All the old oscilloscopes had a range, from memory, up to 25-30k.

60k or better.

[Xeno]

A lot of cars these day have EMS that learn and that means they can compensate for poor quality fuel and take advantage of better quality fuel by modifying the ignition map to suit.

Not can, does happen. For the knock sensor to operate, there needs to be a knock first. FWIW, you don't generally get a really big knock first off. It's progressive and starts with a small knock which generates more heat which generates a bigger knock and so on.

[Xeno]

The carburetor sprays atomized fuel into the cylinders but when the intake manifold, cylinder head, cylinders and pistons are cold, it's very difficult for vapourisation to take place so liquid fuel enters the cylinders.

It is difficult to rebuild the oil film above the oil control ring. It takes a little time. In that time the cylinder walls and rings don't have the protection of the oil film and most wear will take place. That is why cylinder bores will always wear tapered with most of the taper occurring above the oil control ring. A vehicle in continuous use and always warmed up, such as a taxi or a long haul truck, has much less cylinder wear.

[Xeno]

Been there, done that, with E Series Leyland Engines. Have to say though that if the valves and seats are decent, adjustments are not regular events. There's a lot of margin built in. If you don't mind regular clearance checking and adjustments, you can run closer than factory specs and gain the effect of a hotter cam.

A set of pre-measured, marked and sorted shims is a handy thing to have around.

[Xeno]

Look up the process for providing UV protection for tyres. The concept is essentially the same.

[Xeno]

Pads, under extremes of heat, give off gases. It is the presence of those gases *between* the pads and the disc that prevents the friction from happening. The gases make the pads operate more like a hovercraft. The slots provide a means by which the gases can quickly escape. In a road going car, slotted rotors are probably overkill. Not so on high performance vehicles.

[Xeno]

Especially useful where you are working on one of those bastard bits of machinery where you have a mixture of metric and SAE bolts and nuts.

[Xeno]

Removing mass reduces heat holding ability. The material removed does not provide a gain in surface exposure. The real gain is providing a path for the gasses coming off the pad surfaces to escape from between the pad and rotor. Reduces the hovercraft effect.

[Xeno]

I trade my cars in when I'm sick of them.

[The Real Bev]

I'm sure I tried everything that seemed in any way possible. I don't even like thinking about it any more :-(

[Xeno]

Any scoring on a rotor will fail it. As you say, there might be less than 50% of the pad surface in contact with the rotor surface. No way will that bed in properly. You will get localised overheating both on the pad and on the rotor.

[The Real Bev]

Are metrinch wrenches still available? Did anyone ever buy them?